


Like Now

by Catchclaw



Series: Random Bloggy Ficlets [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Napping, Schmoop, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-18
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-31 02:04:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3960316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To Castiel, it seems perfectly reasonable that he's the one to supervise Dean as he sleeps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Now

**Author's Note:**

> A roundup of random ficlets. Some once lived on tumblr, some on my personal blog, but regardless: they've never really had a home.

Dean doesn’t sleep through the night,  
even now, so many months since he awoke under the ground  
and clawed his way back to the living.

It concerns Castiel, this malfunction, for  
he knows how much human operation depends on that sort of rest,  
on the mental unwinding for which his Father made the night.  
He worries that he did something wrong  
left out a piece or mishandled a part  
when he rebuilt what was Dean.

To him, then, it seems perfectly reasonable  
that he is the one to supervise Dean when he sleeps  
even now  
during the day  
during what Sam insists, with a jibe in his voice that Castiel can’t comprehend,  
on referring to as Dean’s “nap time”  
a euphemism that Dean clearly resents,  
but to whose logic always he surrenders.

As such times  
like now  
he takes the steps two at a time  
to the little room up under the eaves that  
Bobby’s let him claim as his own.

In those moments  
now  
he doesn’t seem surprised to see Castiel there, waiting,  
sitting carefully in the hard-backed chair by the window.  
Dean rolls his eyes and peels off his jeans and crawls up into the bed  
And turns his back to Castiel with a sigh.  
Castiel watches him dream from a distance  
counts the breaths he takes as he drifts  
traces the clutch of his hips under the covers  
as he settles and falls into sleep.

There’s something about Dean when he’s like this,  
stretched out long-limbed and lazy  
that makes Castiel feel uneasy.  
Dean’s so vulnerable in such moments,  
in this one,  
so far from the knife-wielding bravado he breathes out during the day  
that he seems alien to Castiel,  
different, like another species of Winchester entirely,  
one that Castiel doesn’t know,  
a man with whom he’s barely acquainted  
and yet a man he knows inside and out.  
It’s a tension, a double vision,  
that makes Castiel shift in his chair, his vessel unsettled.  
Yes. Uneasy.

He looks away from the warm sprawl on the bed  
and peers out,  
beyond the window to the messy stretch of Bobby’s yard.  
His vessel has to squint at the sunlight  
the bright narrow beams that bounce and sing off rusty metal.  
Still. It is an easier sight than Dean’s eyes  
that are lit up, when he is awake,  
with the sort of gentle amusement  
that he wears when they are alone like this.  
Like now.

“Cas,” Dean says from the bedclothes. Awake.

“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” Castiel says to the curtains. “Resting, Dean. Are you not?”

Dean lets out a huff—that, too, is familiar—and shifts around on the bed,  
the ancient frame calling out each movement so clearly  
that Castiel swears he can see it,  
the way Dean’s arms are stretched above his head,  
the way his ankle’s turned outside the sheets.  
Oh. Or perhaps what he sees is Dean’s reflection,  
sketched out within the panes of the window, soft and scattered. Smiling.

Castiel glares down at his hands, those would-be traitors, for  
in moments like these  
now  
when he is close to Dean  
and it’s quiet  
they twitch with defiance, with want,  
for the burn in his fingers reminds him of Dean’s flesh newly made  
and scorching under Castiel’s palm  
his vessel’s  
whatever  
for he has no doubt that  
no matter the shell that contained him  
what touched Dean, what clutched him, was Castiel,  
all of him, everything he was created to be.

“Cas,” Dean says again, and yet it’s different, his name is, somehow.

He looks over, curious, and Dean’s sitting up.  
Strange.  
Sitting up with one arm extended,  
stranger still,  
a flush on his face and a look in his eyes that says clearly  
Come here.

“I don’t—” Castiel says, the words hot thick in his throat.

“C’mere,” Dean says, out loud or with his body or both, Castiel is not certain.  
He does as he’s told, just the same.

For a moment  
now  
Dean simply stares at him  
that beautiful smile that Castiel once wove from threads of his Grace  
and laced into the shape of Dean’s mouth.

“Why are you squinting?” Dean breathes, the words soft in the air that’s between them. “Cas? You’re making me—“

And when Castiel kisses him  
now  
when he tugs Dean’s warm shock into his mouth and puts his hands all over that skin,  
new and familiar,  
that smile doesn’t bend, doesn’t break,  
but wraps itself around Castiel’s name  
and pulls them both into the stars.


End file.
